Gulliver's Travels

The Scale of Human Importance

We humans have the curious habit of viewing our own backyards as the navel of the universe. We strut through our brief existence under the pompous assumption that our social hierarchies, our "sacred" traditions, and our personal dignity are objective benchmarks of reality. We act as though the grandeur of our civilization is a fundamental law of physics rather than a fortunate accident of scale.

However, as the journals of Lemuel Gulliver reveal, this sense of importance is a preposterous illusion. Through his journeys to the diminutive empire of Lilliput and the gargantuan kingdom of Brobdingnag, we discover that human majesty is entirely a matter of millimeters. When the world shifts by a factor of twelve, the "Man-Mountain" becomes a mere toy, and the "lords of the earth" are revealed as little more than a "vile race of odious little vermin."

1. The Relativity of Grandeur: You are Only as Big as Your Surroundings

One of Gulliver's most staggering realizations occurs during his forced residency in Brobdingnag. Having recently departed Lilliput—where he was a god-like titan capable of dragging an entire enemy fleet through the surf—he finds his ego quite literally squeezed between the thumb and forefinger of a common farmer.

In this land of giants, the "majesty" he once possessed is rendered ridiculous. He is nearly drowned in a bowl of cream by a malicious dwarf, carried about in a box like a caged linnet, and forced to realize that "nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison." The very traits we admire in our leaders—their "commanding presence" or "lofty stature"—evaporate when they are viewed from a height of sixty feet.

"I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size... if I had then beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day clothes... I should have been strongly tempted to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me."

2. The Petty Roots of Great Conflicts: Of Eggs and Heels

Gulliver's journals offer a biting satire of our tribalism, proving that the "mighty evils" of civil war and international strife often spring from the most diminutive follies. To an outside observer, our most "noble" causes are no more significant than the arbitrary markers of a Lilliputian faction.

The Big-Endian Schism: For thirty-six moons, the empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu have been locked in a bloody struggle over a point of theology: which end of an egg is the proper one to break? After a prince cut his finger following the ancient practice of Big-Endianism, an imperial edict commanded all subjects to break the Small End. This "monstrous" overreach led to six rebellions, the loss of an emperor's life, and the martyrdom of eleven thousand people who preferred death to such egg-breaking heresy.

This absurdity is mirrored in their domestic politics, where the government is paralyzed by the rivalry between the Tramecksan and Slamecksan. The entire difference between these warring factions rests solely on whether their heels are high or low—a division so profound they refuse to eat, drink, or talk with those of the opposing height.

3. Morality Over Genius: The Lilliputian Approach to Public Office

In describing the "original institutions" of Lilliput—before they were corrupted by the "infamous practice" of rope-dancing—Gulliver reveals a legal philosophy that mocks our own obsession with "sublime genius." The Lilliputians argued that since government is necessary for all, it must be manageable by common understanding.

They held that truth, justice, and temperance are within every man's power. Consequently, they viewed a man of great abilities but corrupt inclinations as far more dangerous than a virtuous man of average intellect. Mistakes made by ignorance in a virtuous disposition are never as fatal as the calculated malfeasance of a "genius" who uses his talents to manage and defend his corruptions.

Their Image of Justice: A figure with six eyes—two before, as many behind, and one on each side—to signify absolute circumspection. She holds an open bag of gold in her right hand and a sheathed sword in her left, demonstrating a preference for reward over punishment.

"In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts."

4. The "Magnifying Glass" of Reality: Why Perfection is an Illusion

Our perception of beauty is merely a failure of our eyesight. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver's diminutive stature provides him with "large optics" that strip away the veneer of human physical perfection, revealing a visceral and nauseating reality.

The Nauseating Reality of the Flesh: Up close, the "fair skins" of the Brobdingnagian Maids of Honor were a landscape of horror. Gulliver describes moles "as broad as a trencher" with hairs "thicker than packthreads," and the sight of a nurse's "monstrous breast"—standing six feet prominent and sixteen in circumference—whose hue was so varied with pimples and freckles that it appeared utterly "nauseous." He recounts with loathing the sight of lice crawling on their clothes, their limbs visible to his naked eye as they rooted like swine in the fabric.

Yet, perspective is a two-way street. Gulliver's own skin, which he considered fair, was described by a Lilliputian friend as "shocking" and full of "great holes" when viewed through their tiny, acute eyes. Our "perfection" is simply a matter of distance; scrutiny reveals only the "odious slime" of our biological existence.

5. The Fickleness of Power: How "Mercy" Can Be a Death Sentence

Gulliver's most terrifying lesson in the "lenity" of princes comes after he saves the Lilliputian palace from a fire using a rather... diuretic method. Despite his "signal service," he is soon greeted with Articles of Impeachment, proving that a king's gratitude is shorter than a Lilliputian's thumb.

The court's debate over Gulliver's punishment reveals the terrifying mask of political "mercy." While his enemies demanded he be set on fire or shot with poisoned arrows, his "friend" Reldresal proposed a "merciful" alternative: putting out both of Gulliver's eyes and gradually starving him to death. The logic was as cynical as it was pragmatic—by reducing his rations, Gulliver would "decay and consume," and once dead, his carcass would be small enough to be carted away by five or six thousand subjects, thus preventing a plague and saving the treasury money.

The Articles of Impeachment against the "Man-Mountain":
• Article I: Traitorously and devilishly extinguishing a palace fire by discharging urine within the royal precincts.
• Article II: Refusing to reduce the empire of Blefuscu to a province or destroy the Big-Endian exiles.
• Article III: Aiding, abetting, and comforting the ambassadors of the enemy empire.
• Article IV: Traitorously intending to make a voyage to Blefuscu with only a verbal license from the Emperor.

A New Map of the Mind

Gulliver returned from his travels with a hard-won, cynical wisdom: "I resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers." His journals are not a map of geography, but a map of the human psyche—a landscape populated by vanity, arbitrary hatreds, and a desperate, frantic need to feel significant.

If our entire civilization were viewed from sixty feet up—or six inches down—which of our "grand" passions would survive the shift? Would our political appointments and religious schisms look like anything more than a "dance on the rope," where we hop upon a slender thread for the chance at a blue silken string?

Perhaps the greatest truth Gulliver found is that we are all, in one way or another, just "diminutive insects" trying to look big in a universe that doesn't even notice we are there.